| — | Ben Hecht, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, director, and producer (1894-1964) |
Joel Spolsky has an excellent guest article on Fred Wilson’s blog about management structures, and flipping the classic org chart on its head. Excellent reading, though his comments on Steve Jobs are a bit subjective.
Marni Soupcoff, National Post · Feb. 13, 2012
Salt must be breathing a sigh of relief. Thanks to a recent article in the journal Nature, the much-maligned mineral has now been overtaken by sugar as nutritional public enemy number one.
The piece, The Toxic Truth About Sugar, sends a message that is dire and direct: Sugar is killing us slowly and should be regulated. The authors blame sugar for obesity, liver problems and high blood pressure, among other ills, and suggest that soft drinks be heavily taxed (preferably enough to double the price of a can of pop) and restricted to older teenagers and adults. They also suggest a regulatory crackdown on sugary food and drink in schools. But it’s OK. They’re not trying to interfere or anything.
“We’re not talking about prohibition. We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives,” says co-author Dr. Laura Schmidt. “What we want is actually to increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”
That’s one way to look at it. The other is that the authors are demonizing a perfectly respectable crystalline carbohydrate that can be safely enjoyed in moderation and adds a lot of enjoyment to people’s diets. And they’re being awfully bossy about it to boot.
Yes, inactive obese people who take in too many calories through sugar could do with less pop (perhaps Coke Zeros, if not zero Cokes). But that’s not a good enough reason to punish an active person of healthy weight for wanting to enjoying an occasional Dr. Pepper as a treat.
Not only is it unreasonably pushy to start regulating sweets, it’s unreasonably short-sighted, too. Tackling obesity and other diet-related conditions for the long run has to involve the affected people taking control of their own health, not being taxed into submission. Otherwise they’ll simply continue to sabotage their own wellbeing in other ways. Unless we’re ready to send government in with the power to mandate every last detail of our exercise and eating habits- it’s the bench press and steamed salmon supper police, everyone! - we’re better off calmly publicizing nutritional facts than strong-arming people into compliance. Information has a better chance than intimidation of resulting in the sort of self-directed change that sticks. Though try convincing the study’s authors of that and you will be told that it will take more than facts to kick an addictive poison.
There are some points of light for sugar, such as respectable nutritionists, doctors and professors who are questioning its portrayal as an inherently terrible and addictive toxin. “Even the most healthful diets on the planet generally contain some foods with added sugar,” Dr. Dave Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center, wrote recently on The Huffington Post. “The dose makes the poison.”
This is why Katz considers the “construction of alarming tables and figures demonstrating the calamitous effects of sugar” to be something of a distortion. “Even more calamitous pathways could be mapped out for oxygen, which in excess is not just highly toxic, but lethal in rather short order,” he explains.
Bill Shrapnel, consultant dietitian and deputy chairman of the University of Sydney Nutrition Research Foundation, is similarly unconvinced that sugar is the dietary devil. “Low sugar is not necessarily good and high sugar is not necessarily bad because sugar isn’t the main game,” Shrapnel said in an article in The Australian last summer.
In the same piece, his colleague, University of Sydney nutritionist Jennie Brand-Miller, agreed, contending that things like meeting the recommended daily requirements of Omega 3 fatty acids and limiting the consumption of alcohol are a lot more important dietary priorities.
In reality, while no one is touting sugar as a health food, even the question of whether sugar makes us sick (and if it does, how sick it makes us) is far from settled. “It doesn’t actually do any direct harm to the human body,” Brand-Miller said. “It doesn’t raise blood cholesterol or raise blood pressure or cause cancer.”
Even the causal link between sugar and obesity, which is often considered to be a given, is not totally clear cut: In Australia, sugar consumption declined by 16% between 1980 and 2003, but obesity rates tripled during the same period. Diabetes rates also increased significantly. Last spring, the New England Journal of Medicine published a report showing that diet and lifestyle are the key culprits for weight-gain over the long term.
Clearly becoming healthier is far more complicated than just cutting out sugar.
The irony is that sugar can be a powerful force for good in the quest to eat better. By making strong-or bitter-tasting ingredients more palatable, a little sugar can be the difference between a kid who eats bran muffins and kale smoothies and a kid who won’t consume fibrous grains or leafy greens. This bit of Mary Poppins wisdom applies to adults as well, of course. And sometimes modestly indulging a sweet tooth is the best way to prevent an all-out sugar binge.
Shrapnel put it succinctly: “Sugar has been given a bad name.” Brand-Miller was similarly blunt when asked about the recent Nature article: “Hopefully, there’ll be a concerted backlash to all this nonsense.”
It is not unlikely. When it comes to expert scare-mongering about food, the public generally has the good sense to tune out once the rhetoric gets silly. And it doesn’t get much sillier than characterizing sugar as an evil poison.
msoupcoff@nationalpost.com
“Like Proust, I now believe with pagan zeal in a book’s ability to hoard another’s experience and voice, and its willingness to wait with mythological patience.”
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
Charles Dickens
Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.
The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?’
Leigh Van Bryan was due to go to Los Angeles with his friend Emily Banting but was stopped when he arrived in the U.S. over tweets he had sent
After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.
Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.
Federal agents even searched his suitcase looking for spades and shovels, claiming Emily was planning to act as Leigh’s ‘look out’ while he raided Marilyn’s tomb.
Bar manager Leigh, from Coventry, and Emily, 24, from Birmingham, were then quizzed for five hours at LAX before they were handcuffed and put into a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight.
They spent 12 hours in separate holding cells before being driven back to the airport where they were put on a plane home via Paris.
Leigh, an Irish national, and Emily arrived at Birmingham Airport last Wednesday afternoon.
Emily said: ‘The officials told us we were not allowed in to the country because of Leigh’s tweet. They wanted to know what we were going to do.
‘They asked why we wanted to destroy America and we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party.
‘I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh’s lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe.
‘I couldn’t believe it because it was a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show.
‘It got even more ridiculous because the officials searched our suitcases and said they were looking for spades and shovels. They did a full body search on me too.
‘We just wanted to have a good time on holiday. That was all Leigh meant in his tweet. He would not hurt anyone.’
Leigh said: ‘It’s just so ridiculous it’s almost funny but at the time it was really scary. The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist.
Paperwork handed to Mr Van Bryan confirms that he was questioned by the Department for Homeland Security before entry to the U.S. was denied
‘I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me “you’ve really f***** up with that tweet boy”.
‘When I was in the van I was handcuffed and put in a cage. I had a panic attack but the worse was yet to come.
‘When we arrived at the prison I was shoved in a cell on my own but after an hour two huge Mexican men covered in tattoos came in and started asking me who I was.
‘They told me they’d been arrested for taking cocaine over the border.
‘When the food arrived on the tray they took it all and just left me with a carton of apple juice.’
After 12 hours in custody they returned to the airport where they were handed documents which stated they had been refused entry to the US.
Emily’s charge sheet stated: ‘It is believed that you are travelling with Leigh-Van Bryan who possibly has the intentions of coming to the United States to commit crimes.’
Leigh’s charge sheet, alongside a police mug shot and finger print, added: ‘He had posted on his Tweeter website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe.
‘Also on his tweeter account Mr Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America.’
Leigh and Emily have now been told they must apply for visas from the US Embassy in London before flying to the US again.
By Jeff Macke
The MF Global story may have fallen off the front page but the hits keep coming for those waiting for justice to be done. This week’s insults include a Wall Street Journal story suggesting the $1.2 billion in missing client funds may have been “vaporized” and an admission by ratings agency Moody’s (MCO) that MF’s investments in European assets came as a surprise.
More damning than Moody’s ignorance is an assertion from fellow credit ratings group Standard & Poors that the firm received an email from former MF CFO Henri Steenkamp claiming the company’s financial condition had “never been stronger.” That email was sent on October 24th of last year, just one week prior to MF’s bankruptcy.
The House Financial Services Committee will continue grilling the ratings agencies this Thursday, but is unlikely to produce anything to assuage investors already skeptical of Wall Street being a den of thieves living off the money of the unsuspecting masses. Breakout welcomed Hank Smith, CIO of equity of Haverford Trust to explore the issue of investor confidence and the MF debacle.
“This is really quite a disgrace,” says Smith in the attached clip. Speaking specifically of former MF Global head Jon Corzine Smith says, “You’re talking about an ex-Goldman (GS) CEO, ex-U.S. Senator, New Jersey Governor taking a company and playing roulette with it.”
Noting that the “lawyered up” Corzine is likely to lay low for as long as possible, Smith speculates that Corzine was “trying to take a fledgling company and essentially rolled the dice” in an effort to make MF a player in financial circles.
“Did Corzine do anything illegal? I’m not sure. Was he bad manager? I’m 100% sure of that,” says Smith.
The concern here about MF isn’t making sure a bad guy gets caught. Criminals go free all the time; even on Wall Street. The issue is one of trust in financial markets. Without trust you can’t have markets and it’s getting ever more difficult to defend this system against accusations of rampant corruption.
Smith, who helps manage over $6 billion says distrust in the system is resulting in investors voting for other asset classes with their feet, regardless of traditionally compelling valuations.
“Almost three years off the trough of the recession we’re some 100 percentage points off the March 2009 lows yet we have sentiment and confidence that is reflective of where we were three years ago,” he states.
Would the Department of Justice getting involved in the case of MF Global restore trust? Not in and of itself, but it would be a baby step. $1.2 billion in client funds has gone to money heaven and MF Global had it last. You don’t need to be a $1,500 an hour lawyer to know a crime has been committed.
If we can find politicians and prosecutors with the guts to enforce existing laws then maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to start building trust between Main Street and the financial industry.
